Taking on the mean girl: O’Donnell, Scarborough go after Sarah Palin

With the media continuing to adore her, reality TV beckoning her entire family — Kardashian style — and most of the GOP terrified to take her on (Karl Rove is so terrified of her minions, he will only do it from overseas) … I’ve been wondering when someone — anyone, really, besides Peggy Noonan — would have the guts to stand up, and say out loud, without fear of the tea party goon squad — that Empress Palin has no $150,000 wardrobe. Well, here we go, Peggy, it seems you are no longer alone …

First up: Palin takes a hit from the left. Lawrence O’Donnell, back (thankfully) to the helm of his nightly show on MSNBC, issued an epic takedown of Palin’s silly, self-referential twitterpations about Wikileaks. It’s classic Lawrence, and covers everything from Sarah Palin’s logical fallacies about her own ability to keep her book from leaking, to her failure to assign proper responsibility for the stuff Wikileaks got hold of. Watch, and learn:

But that’s just the start. Next up, Palin takes a swat from the right, in the form of Joe Scarborough, who issues an anti-Palin broadside straight from the Ronald Reagan Library (otherwise known as Politico) — telling his fellow GOPers to man up, at long last, and take on the chillbilly. Here we go …

Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private.

Enough. It’s time for the GOP to man up.

What man or mouse with a fully functioning human brain and a résumé as thin as Palin’s would flirt with a presidential run? It makes the political biography of Barack Obama look more like Winston Churchill’s, despite the fact that the 44th president breezed into the Oval Office as little more than a glorified state senator.

Still, Palin is undeterred, charging ahead maniacally while declaring her intention to run for the top office in the land if “nobody else will.” Adding audacity to this dopey dream is that Palin can’t stop herself from taking swings at Republican giants. In the past month alone, she has mocked Ronald Reagan’s credentials, dismissed George H.W. and Barbara Bush as arrogant “blue bloods” and blamed George W. Bush for wrecking the economy.

Wow. That’ll win ’em over in Iowa.

One can only guess what comes next on Palin’s bizarre road show. Maybe the publishing world’s favorite reality star can keep drawing attention and selling billions of books by spitting on John Wayne’s grave or “manning up” by shooting an American bald eagle.

Or how about this? Maybe Palin could show up on Fox News and build her weak résumé by tearing down Reagan’s.

Oh, wait. Been there, done that.

When Sean Hannity asked Palin whether being in a reality show diminished her standing to be president, the former half-term governor mocked Reagan’s biography, dismissing him as “an actor.”

Sounding like every left-wing politician and media elitist who ridiculed Reagan for decades, Palin sneered that she could be president if the actor from “Bedtime for Bonzo” managed to do so. …

And when you diss the Gipper, well, them’s Noonan-Scarborough fightin’ words… Another excerpt:

After Palin mocked Reagan’s credentials, the TLC reality show star took aim at the 41st president and his wife. Borrowing again from old left-wing attacks that Democrats used against GOP presidents, Palin channeled Ann Richards by bashing Bush and his wife as “blue bloods” who had wrecked America.

Palin was perturbed that a former president and his wife would dare to answer a question about whom they preferred for president in 2012. Perhaps her anger was understandable. After all, these disconnected “blue bloods” had nothing in their backgrounds that could ever make them understand “real America” like a former governor from Alaska who quit in the middle of her first term and then got rich.

There’s more where that came from. Read the whole thing. Trust me. It’s worth your while.

Meanwhile, even Dubya seems to be getting in on the act, which increasingly looks like a Reagan-Bush crowd stand against Palin, who ironically, was drummed up by the same neocons who found a useful sponge in Bush the Younger. But the Reagan and Bush family and accolytes appear to be forming the anti-Palin axis right now, since the rest of the GOP is plainly terrified of her. In an interview with Rick Warren, during his book tour (which is, interestingly enough, competing with Palin’s) George W. Bush made what sounded like a swipe at Palin’s darling daughter:

Bush spent more than an hour Monday evening chatting with mega-pastor Rick Warren in front of an adoring crowd at Warren’s Southern California church. As the two longtime pals yukked it up, Bush noted that he read voraciously while in office and that “one of my priorities was not watching television.”

“So you’ve never seen ’24′?” Warren asked with an incredulous laugh, referring to the pulse-pounding Fox drama about every possible terrorism scenario you could imagine.

“Or ‘Dancing With the Stars’ or any of that stuff,” Bush broke in.

Whoops. As everyone must know — even TV-boycotting ex-presidents, right? — Sarah Palin’s eldest daughter, Bristol, came in third on DWTS last week after a surprisingly long run that many believe was extended by the voting leverage of her mama’s tea party fans than by any apparent talent on Bristol’s part.

Bristol’s DWTS candidacy, like Sarah’s reality show on TLC, was also an opportunity for the Palins to get back at anyone who didn’t back them. “It’d feel like a big middle finger to all the people out there who hate my mom and hate me,” Bristol said of the prospect of her winning the contest.

And now, we wait for Palin to go Twitter-balistic, throw up the middle finger, and fire up her Facebook word salad-shooter.